Episode 43 Summary

[Tony Meade]

SESSION 43

Comment on Tom, Boethius, and pity for evildoers:

• Boethius asserts that evil is a disease of the soul, and like those who are sick in the body, those who are wicked are worthy of pity rather than hate.
• Tolkien picks up on this assertion, and we are encouraged to pity other evil creatures like Gollum, seeing their own wickedness as the source of their wretchedness.
• Tom’s casting out of the Barrow-wight is fundamentally metaphorical than geographical and emphasizes the isolation and desolation the wight has brought on itself.
• Tom’s spell seems less of a punishment than a quarantine. Nothing that Tom has called upon the wight is something the wight has not already done to itself.

Tom begins the cleansing process:

• The spirit that leaves the barrow after Tom’s spell seems to be incorporeal.
• The part of the inner end of the chamber that falls in seems to be where the wight was.
• It’s possible that the crash is due his physical form being used to burst out of the barrow, but the wight does not seem to be taking the body with it as it flees.
• The sound of the shriek fading away into the distance may not be a completely physical sound, and the distance may be more metaphysical.
• Tom may have caused the cave in to destroy the body that the wight was using for good.
• All of Tom’s acts seem to be part of breaking the spell of the Barrow-wight and ensuring it does not return to the barrow.
• There is a superficial similarity between the cries of the Ringwraiths and Barrow-wights.
• Note: While the onscreen adaptation of the Nazgul’s shrieks is effective, it is not exactly the same as what is described in the book, which draw their power from more than just sound.
• Why does the Barrow-wight wail? This seems to be a spontaneous expression of its pain and anguish and suffering as it is forced to leave its home.

Out upon the grass:

• The hobbits are moved to the area on top of the barrow, which is topped with natural grass.
• The land has not been defiled by the Barrow-wights, only the barrows themselves.
• Once the power and influence of the wight is removed, in the form of the fog and other effects, and the sun returns, the air is cleaned, and the grass is wholesome.
• We do see other lands around evildoers, like Smaug and Sauron, which are desolated. The Barrow-wights have not twisted the land around them. We don’t yet know why this is.

On the nature of the body of the Barrow-wight:

• Why is the hand still wriggling when Frodo looks at it? Shouldn’t it have stopped when the power of the wight left it?
• In earlier versions of The Book of Lost Tales, the Valar and Maiar are shown having kids. This is a result of their manifested bodies, which is like clothing to them, interacting in the world.
• We have seen that Ainur can have children with physical beings, like Melian and Ungoliant.
• Either the Barrow-wight is a spiritual being that has manifested a body like the Ainur, or it is animating a dead body, which is unusual in Tolkien, but not unheard of. Tolkien’s werewolves are wolf bodies that have been forcibly inhabited by foul spirits.
• The wriggling hand suggests that the body was a corpse animated by the Barrow-wight, but the reason that it is still wriggling afterwards is unclear.
• We know that the spirits that became the Barrow-wights are not native to the barrows.
• The remaining wriggling might indicate the need to still cleanse the barrow of the wight’s influence, which Tom immediately begins doing after banishing the wight.
• The wriggling of the hand is both emblematic of the wight’s influence and adds to the horror of the scene.

Tom begins cleaning the barrow:

• It seems important that Tom, rather than simply scattering the treasure, chooses to sun it.
• This is a reference to an older belief that the planets and stars have the effect of creating metals in the earth. The Sun, in particular, creates gold.
• There is a fairy-tale trope of cleansing fairy gold using sunlight to make it purer.
• Tom would not want to increase the gold’s value, but rather purifying it from evil.
• There seems to be an idea that the brooding over the treasure by the Barrow-wight necessitates a purification.

Tom reawakens the hobbits in verse:

• Tom has not laid the hobbits in the sunshine like the gold; instead, he has laid them facing west.
• Once again, the east and west sides of the barrow point to outside powers influencing the area.
• Tom has emphasized before that the east and west sides of the barrow make a difference.
• When Tom raises his hand in blessing, it is another example of the power of hands here.
• Tom declares the dead hand broken; this is both literal and metaphorical.
• Tom gives the hobbits a command three times in the first line alone, in the imperative mood.
• The command to wake is separate from the command to hear his call.
• In the second line, Tom reverses the sense of the wight’s spell, commanding warmth in them.
• Like the wight called then cold stone to hold them, while Tom declares the cold stone fallen.
• Old stone and cold wights were some of the things that Tom warned the hobbits not to mess around with, unless their hearts never falter, which luckily Frodo’s heart did not.
• In declaring the facts of the open door and broken hand, he is invoking them in his spell.
• Frodo’s strength and actions in breaking the wight’s spell also cannot be overlooked. The kind of battle in which he was engaged will be echoed in the battles with the Balrog and Witch-king.
• When Tom uses the word “flown”, he means “fled quickly”, not took to the air.
• Tom characterizes the wight as “Night under Night”, similar to “darker than the darkness”. These may be kennings that allows Tom to speak indirectly of the wight without summoning.
• This is also parallel to Gandalf’s term of “shadow under his great shadow” meaning that the wight is an evildoer serving under a greater one.
• What “Gate” is opened by Tom? When Night runs away, it brings the dawn, and Tom is connecting, literally and metaphorically, the flight of the wight with the morning sunrise.
• The gate being open indicates that the hobbits have been freed, and Tom is inviting them through the gate back into the light. He doesn’t command them to come, though.
• When Tom banishes the wight, the gate is forever shut, so that the wight cannot return.
• The indicative phrases state the reasons why the hobbits can obey Tom’s imperatives.
• The parallel with the Resurrection at Easter becomes clearer through this poem.

Merry’s implanted memory dream:

• It is clear that Merry is remembering the fall of Cardolan and the last stand against Angmar in the Barrow-hills. This is shown by the reference to Carn Dûm, the capital of Angmar.
• This is a Dúnedain memory that Merry wakes with, though they did not create the barrows.
• We know that the Dúnedain used the barrows to bury their dead, and specifically this barrow, as they find Dúnedain swords within the barrow.
• This may be a memory of the person who was buried in that tomb. How did this happen?
• Note: Some people have read this passage as evidence that the Barrow-wights were the unquiet spirit of the dead Dúnedain buried in the barrows. The counterevidence is that nothing in Tom’s words indicate that he was releasing the trapped spirits of men, which he would’ve mentioned.
• Tom means no harm to the body that was being used, only to the spirit he banished.
• It seems plausible that Merry’s memory was a first-person experience of one of the people buried in the barrow, though the mechanism is unclear.
• One way to understand the source of a vision is to see what the effect of that vision on the person receiving it. So, what is the effect of this memory of Merry?
• Merry is not overcome with fear, but with compassion and empathy for the man who died.
• We know that the narrator has speculated the pleasure that the person who had forged Merry’s barrow-blade was used to defeat the Witch-king, so did this vision motivate Merry’s actions?
• We can say that the former owner of that blade would also be pleased. In a sense, Merry avenges this man’s death on the battlefield, remembering their deaths against Angmar.
• The key that helps reveal the source of this memory is the fact that he was dreaming.
• We have seen Frodo’s visions of relevant events in his dreams, and even though this vision is of centuries before, it is relevant to Merry now.
• Merry is himself a victim of the Barrow-wight, and he is identifying with another of its victims.
• What is the source of this power that allows Merry to see this? This is unclear, though suspects include the power of the people of Cardolan or the spirits of the hills who remember Cardolan.
• Note: Dream interpretation was a cottage industry in the Middle Ages, and some commentaries on interpretations of dreams became bestsellers, such as those of Scipio the Younger.
• It’s notable that Frodo doesn’t want to speak of his experience, which speaks well of Frodo’s humility given his actions to rescue the hobbits, and the recent Ring temptation.
• There’s also Frodo’s horror which prevents him from speaking, and he does not want to relive it.
• Frodo thought he was lost, but he now realizes that he is not lost, and he is happy about that.
• The sense in which the word “lost” is bigger than being simply confused here.
• Frodo’s urgency to leave is partly motivated by him not knowing that Tom will accompany them.
• It is also partly driven by a desire to leave this scene and the experience behind him.
• It’s also notable that Frodo never talks to anyone about the temptations of the Ring.

END OF SESSION